Apple: “Siri. Your wish is its command. – Siri on iPhone 4S lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more. Ask Siri to do things just by talking the way you talk. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back. Siri is so easy to use and does so much, you’ll keep finding more and more ways to use it. … Talk to Siri as you would to a person. Say something like ‘Tell my wife I’m running late.’ ‘Remind me to call the vet.’ ‘Any good burger joints around here?’ And Siri answers you. It does what you say and finds the information you need. And then it hits you. You’re actually having a conversation with your iPhone. … Siri not only understands what you say, it’s smart enough to know what you mean. So when you ask ‘Any good burger joints around here?’ Siri will reply ‘I found a number of burger restaurants near you.’ Then you can say ‘Hmm. How about tacos?’ Siri remembers that you just asked about restaurants, so it will look for Mexican restaurants in the neighborhood. And Siri is proactive, so it will question you until it finds what you’re looking for.”

Wikipedia: “Siri is a personal assistant application for iOS. The application uses natural language processing to answer questions, make recommendations, and perform actions by delegating requests to an expanding set of web services. The iOS app is the first public product by its makers, who are focused on artificial intelligence applications. Siri was acquired by Apple Inc. on April 28, 2010. – Siri’s marketing claims include that Siri adapts to the user’s individual preferences over time and personalizes results, as well as accomplishing tasks such as making dinner reservations and reserving a cab. … Siri was founded in December 2007 by Dag Kittlaus (CEO), Adam Cheyer (VP Engineering), and Tom Gruber (CTO/VP Design), together with Norman Winarsky from SRI’s venture group. … It was announced on October 4, 2011 that Siri will be included with the iPhone 4S. The new version of Siri is deeply integrated into iOS, and offers conversational interaction with many applications, including reminders, weather, stocks, messaging, email, calendar, contacts, notes, music, clocks, web browser, Wolfram Alpha, and maps. Currently, Siri only supports English (US, UK, and Australia), German and French. … Siri is a spin-out from SRI International’s Artificial Intelligence Center, and is an offshoot of the DARPA-funded CALO project, described as perhaps the largest artificial-intelligence project ever launched.”

TC: “The integration with iOS seems to be just as impressive as we’ve been hearing: you can ask it to remind you to call someone before you leave the office, and it’ll automatically create an entry in the Reminders app, complete with a geo-fence just to be sure. You can also ask Siri to read your queued messages to you and make an appointment in the Calendar app. – The worst part so far? Siri indeed seems to require the iPhone 4S’s extra horsepower, because it appears to be a 4S exclusive. The kicker? Siri was originally a run-of-the-mill iPhone app. What a shame. – Siri will be a beta for the time being, as it only supports English, German, and French voice input, but there are more language add-ons and tweaks to come.”

WP: “As rumored, Apple’s doing some all-new voice-control AI stuff in iOS 5. It’s called Siri, which is the name of the app Apple bought for $200 million a couple years ago. … You can also ask Siri to look things up on Wikipedia for you, and Siri can use Wolfram Alpha to do more complicated calculations. Siri’s list of capabilities is near endless, including asking it to play genres of music for you, look up something on maps, or what the weather is. Our favorite question? ‘Siri, who are you?’ Siri responds: ‘I am your humble personal assistant.’ … The bad news? All this great stuff is only available for the iPhone 4S – Apple had to do something to force an upgrade! In all seriousness, some of this AI functionality can be incredibly processor intensive, so Siri might be leaning on the A5 chip quite heavily.”

MLS: “Siri Search, makes use of Yelp’s business ratings, thus this makes instantly makes Yelp a strong local competitor to Google Places. Yelp is now very relevant to your small business rankings. Google Places has been the big dog in local optimization or as I call it, Local Awesomeization… And your places ranking and profile completion has become very important for your local marketing.- Now, Siri, which is a virtual assistant will be able to find you anything you want… and it is using the Yelp Reviews to rank the recommendations. … Nuture your Yelp account now. Claim it, and begin getting good reviews. Local search is a science, and you have to get that information out there.”

GigaOM: “Apple’s intent when it bought Siri was rumored to be building a search engine, though Jobs defused that speculation by saying, ‘We have no plans to go into the search business. We don’t care about it – other people do it well.’ But Jobs also said earlier last year: ‘On a mobile device, search is not where it’s at, not like on the desktop. They’re (consumers are) spending all their time on these apps – they’re using apps to get to data on the internet, not generalized search.‘ – With Siri, Apple doesn’t have to get into the search game if it can use Siri to direct people to the apps, services and information they need. That’s probably not a big money-gainer for Apple, but it could put a hurt on rival Google, which relies on search advertising.”

TUAW: “Curious about the iPhone 4S’s new voice assistant feature? So were we. – [We] tracked down a set of example phrases that the new Siri voice assistant is capable of understanding. It turns out that Siri can handle many categories of voice interaction. – Without further ado, here they are, ordered by interaction category, along with Apple-supplied examples of using each category.”

FC: “Don’t let her dulcet voice and easygoing, eager-to-please manner fool you. Behind Siri, the voice-controlled personal assistant app destined to power Apple’s iPhone 4S, lies the heart of a hardened combat veteran. That’s because the technology was spun out of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s high-tech research and development arm. … For now it can only respond to simple commands, but the technology underlying it is anything but. The problem with most speech recognition technology has been that it has a hell of a time with all-too human variations in speech – accents, dialects, intonation, enunciation, and slang. Tell it you want to hide under ‘a rock’ and it might tell you about ‘Iraq.’ Like the dream of the paperless office, which the advent of the personal computer was supposed to herald, speech recognition often makes more work than it saves. Siri promises to change all that, and you should thank the wizards at DARPA. While they didn’t create the technology, they incubated it. … I can’t wait to tell that to my Siri-powered iPhone, although I doubt it’ll know how to respond – not yet, anyhow.”

TC: “The most talked about element of … Apple event had to be Siri. The new feature of the iPhone 4S, born out of Apple’s purchase of the company by the same name in 2010, looks amazing. But one thing never mentioned during the keynote was a key piece of technology behind Siri: Nuance. – We first reported that Siri would be a key part of iOS 5 back in March. As we dug deeper, we learned that Apple and Nuance were involved in negotiations to make sure this could be a reality. You see, Siri does not work without Nuance. … So, is Nuance a part of Apple’s implementation of Siri as well? Yes. Though, don’t bother trying to get anyone to admit that. …Nuance is powering Siri. But Apple clearly struck a deal with Nuance which precludes them from talking about it. This is Apple technology, this is not about Nuance, is how I imagine Apple may put it. Apparently, Nuance is happy enough with Apple’s undoubtedly large check for this licensing agreement that they are willing to keep quiet.”

RWW: “Apple finally introduced the availability of the voice-command personal assistant app it paid $200m for today, called Siri. The military spin-off technology was both widely loved and often panned when it was available independently; it was either lovable Skynet or a fish on a bicycle, depending on who you ask. I tended towards thinking it the latter, myself. … But what do I want as a user – on my iPhone? I want Swype! Swype is a keyboard program available on almost every smartphone in the world except the iPhone. … It’s the fastest way to provide input on a mobile device. It’s fabulous and it’s incredible that Swype isn’t on iOS yet. I assume it’s because of Apple’s strict control over interface design and unwillingness to provide options in design. … Time will tell, but I don’t think Siri is going to be a killer app on the iPhone. Will it be used more than the current iPhone voice control? We’ll see.”

TUAW: “Since the iPhone 4S features the same A5 processor as the iPad 2, owners of Apple’s current-gen tablet have wondered if it’s possible that Siri, Apple’s new voice assistant, might be offered on the iPad 2. … Voice Control as it now exists on the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 doesn’t function on the iPad or iPad 2, but there’s a reason for that: the existing commands would be essentially useless on those devices. … On the other hand, Siri’s commands would be immensely useful on the iPad. … In fact, we’ve done some digging into Siri and found that most of the actual work of understanding voice commands gets offloaded to external servers. In essence, the iPhone 4S and its built-in processing functions determine what you said, while Apple’s servers translate that into what you meant and send that information back to your iPhone. … For the time being, Siri remains an iPhone 4S exclusive and one we have yet to test for ourselves. We look forward to putting this innovative feature under our interrogation lights once the iPhone 4S is released on October 14.”

Waxy: “In 1987, Apple released this concept video for Knowledge Navigator [the rest of the video is newer, probably circa 1996 or so, but the Knowledge Navigator part is from 1987], a voice-based assistant combined with a touchscreen tablet computer. … Based on the dates mentioned in the Knowledge Navigator video, it takes place on September 16, 2011. The date on the professor’s calendar is September 16, and he’s looking for a 2006 paper written ‘about five years ago,’ setting the year as 2011. – And … at the iPhone keynote, Apple announced Siri, a natural language-based voice assistant, would be built into iOS 5 and a core part of the new iPhone 4S. – So, 24 years ago, Apple predicted a complex natural-language voice assistant built into a touchscreen Apple device, and was less than a month off.“

ATD: “AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft compete for ad dollars. But a new pact calls for the rivals to cooperate on ad sales, too. – The three companies are going to start selling ad inventory on each others’ sites, in a plan they hope will make them more competitive with Google. … Executives from all three companies briefed a group of top Web publishers and ad buyers about the plan at a dinner presentation last night in Manhattan. … The three companies will share revenue on the ads, and supposedly they’ll pocket more than they would have if a third-party ad network sold their stuff.”

Guardian: “The potential tie-up comes days after reports that AOL and Yahoo, fallen giants of the first age of the internet, were discussing a merger in the wake of the firing of Yahoo’s chief executive, Carol Bartz. … The advertising hook-up, in the meantime, could help slow the fast growth of Google and Facebook in the lucrative online display advertising market. – Google has long dominated search advertising – or online classified advertising – but overtook Yahoo in display advertising in May this year in the US, according to research firm IDC.”

pC: “All three of issued statements to the effect that there have been some ties before and the portals are exploring ‘future’ collaborations. … But ultimately, it’s hard to see what the value of the three combining sales efforts would be. There is a tremendous amount of similarity in terms of reach among AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft. So where’s the complement? … The reason Google and Facebook are eating away at the portals’ display dominance is easy: the users that advertisers want to reach are more and more easily reachable through social media sites like Facebook, not through general content offered by portals. At the same time, Google’s tight relationship with the agencies, through its demand side platform Invite Media and the Google DoubleClick ad exchange, make it a more efficient funnel for online ad dollars.”

VB: “Since the three companies will be sharing revenue from the display ads, the real challenge will be in convincing each of their separate sales teams to start selling their competitors’ ad inventory. – The partnership, scheduled to begin by the end of the year, doesn’t require that each of the companies exclusively work with each other, according to the report.”

TNW: “The ad pact will start at the end of 2011 and will not require exclusivity so each company is free to work with any ad network, even Google. I imagine it will still require a bit of training to get their internal sales teams to start selling competitors’ inventory. By banding together in Musketeer style, the three companies will share ad revenues in hopes of increasing their total earnings in Google’s shadow. The online advertising world is one of the most competitive landscapes and as companies go head to head in the language of CPM, CPC, DSP and conversion tracking pixels….it’s like the wild west for geeks out there.”

Google News Help: “Editors’ Picks is a feature that showcases original, innovative news content that a news publisher has on their site at any given time. This content may include long-form narrative articles, slideshows, interactive graphics, or video stories, just to name a few possibilities. – The links you see in Editors’ Picks are hand-picked by the news organization whose logo is displayed above the links. Google News does not select the articles. – If you are a News publisher and wish to submit an Editors’ Picks feed to Google News, please review our guidelines and documentation first.”

Google: “Google News is introducing a new section in the right-hand column of the U.S. edition. The section is called ‘Editors’ Picks,’ and it displays original content that publishers have selected as highlights from their publications. This is the latest addition to recent improvements we’ve made to the variety and presence of stories and multimedia on Google News. – An array of news organizations, including local, national and niche publishers, are now using Editors’ Picks to display their best, most engaging content. Because Google News relies on algorithms, Editors’ Picks will always be just that- picks provided by publishers themselves, and not by Google. … You may have first noticed Editors’ Picks as an experiment last year. Based on the data from that experiment, we have been working with nearly two dozen publishers in recent months and have seen a positive response from readers and publishers alike: readers get the news they’re interested in from the sources they trust, and publishers receive higher traffic to their websites.”

Nieman: “When Google News launched in 2002, it did so with some declarations: ‘This page was generated entirely by computer algorithms without human editors.’ And: ‘No humans were harmed or even used in the creation of this page.’ – That core approach – computerized curation, algorithmic authority, NoMo sapiens – has served Google News well in the nearly-a-decade it’s been around… Editors’ Picks, a display of original content that journalists (human ones!) have selected as editorial highlights from their publications. … That’s a big deal, and only partially because of Google News’ traditional algo-centricism. … In addition to providing users with more good content, Editors’ Picks might also pave the way for more effective partnerships with news publishers. … For publishers, Editors’ Picks is also a way to highlight brand identity within a platform that has tended to emphasize news stories over news institutions. … It takes the notion of serendipity, in other words, and applies it to news organizations themselves.”

SEL: “More than a year after the experiment began, Google News has brought Editor’s Picks to the home page of its US site – marking the first real human-curated content on what Google has proudly said was always a completely algorithmic way of presenting news. – It could also be seen as something of an olive branch toward publishers, especially given the shaky relationship that’s existed between the two.”

SEW: “This appears to be a win-win for everyone involved. News publishers now have a mechanism to let Google know what their featured stories are. – Readers will be able to see additional content in the form of these features. As a result, Google will likely see a boost in on-site time and stickiness. Clearly the number of articles you read will help you collect Google News badges. – However, bringing search back into the conversation for a moment: since these articles are hand-picked by the editors – which may include editorials and paid features – will this adversely affect relevancy?“

Facebook: “The new chat design includes a sidebar that lists the people you message most. Now it’s easier to find your friends and start a conversation. The sidebar adjusts with the size of your browser window, and it automatically appears when the window is wide enough. … We’re also launching multi-person chat, which is one of our most requested features. Now when your friends can’t figure out what movie to see, you can just add them to a chat and decide together. To include more friends in your conversation, simply select Add Friends to Chat. … Video chat has been around for years now, but it’s still not an everyday activity for most people. Sometimes it’s too difficult to set up, or the friends you want to talk to are on different services. – So a few months ago, we started working with Skype to bring video calling to Facebook. We built it right into chat, so all your conversations start from the same place. To call your friend, just click the video call button at the top of your chat window.”